Epoxy compounds are used in a wide range of fields as sealing materials for electrical and electronic parts, molding materials, casting materials, laminating materials, composite materials, adhesives and powder coatings, because their curing with various curing agents yields cured products with excellent mechanical properties, humidity resistance and electrical properties.
With continuing advances in technology, increasingly higher performance is being demanded of epoxy compounds in terms of their heat resistance, for example. Improvement in heat resistance by using N-(2,3-epoxypropyl)perhydro-4,5-epoxyphthalimide, which has an imide structure, has already been proposed (R. Antoni et al., Makromol. Chem., 194, 411 (1993)), but since the process described therein employs epichlorhydrin during the production steps for the intermediate it is impossible to avoid inclusion of halogen residue in the final product, and therefore the process is not desirable as a process for production of products that are intended to be used as electronic materials requiring minimal halogen residue. Also, while imide epoxy compounds with identical allyl groups in the molecule are preferred for compositing with other resin compounds and the like, such epoxy compounds have glycidyl groups and therefore cannot be applied for useful and important industrial reactions such as hydrosilylation.
Similar imide backbone-containing epoxy compounds have also been proposed (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-17048), but because they also include aromatic rings, they are unsuitable for purposes such as LED sealing materials. It has therefore been a highly desirable goal in the industry to solve these problems by providing allyl group-containing alicyclic epoximide compounds.